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Crown chakra: here and now and purple

We’ve worked our way up to the top, the Crown Chakra. This is the place of transcendence, of realization, both materially and spiritually, of Unity.

Need catching up? Visit any of these previous entries in The Rainbow Within Chakra Series

1st: Root chakra
2nd: Sacral chakra
3rd: Solar plexus chakra
4th: Heart chakra
5th: Throat chakra
6th: Third-eye chakra
7th: Crown chakra

Do any of these apply to you?

  • I just can’t see that there’s a larger pattern than what I see.
  • I want answers, but I am afraid of them.
  • I want to know the will of the Divine and live by it, but I am afraid it might require me to make changes.

Unity erases the illusion of distinction. The masculine and the feminine are one. The physical and the spiritual are one. All opposites are conjoined. There is no difference between you and not-you.


This is the symbol of the tao — two opposites joined as one, each with their antithesis embedded in its deepest part. And because all is one, space ceases to exist. And without space there is no time. We came from Unity and we are working our way through the illusion of duality back to Unity via awareness and consciousness.

The Crown Chakra is your connection to Source. It is where we fully merge our physical and spiritual selves and see through the illusions of time and space, seeing ourselves as the timeless beings we truly are. This moment-to-moment realization enables us to live and love in the only time that really exists — the present moment.

Here are some indications that you’ve got an imbalance in your Crown Chakra.

Emotional, mental and physical symptoms associated with imbalance:

  • Crisis of faith — a Dark Night of the Soul
  • Chronic exhaustion that is not linked to a physical cause
  • Sensitivities to light and sound and your environment

The color is violet. I have always been drawn to purple. Royal, gorgeous, purple (hence the color palette of this blog).

The seed sound is silent. The Crown Chakra has no sound.

The verb is “to know.”

The associated endocrine gland is the pineal.

The Crown Chakra has to do with being. Pure being.

Christian Sacrament: Extreme Unction. To receive the grace to finish your business in the present moment.

Healing thought: Live in the present moment.
I’m having a hard time writing this entry. I have worked a lot on my six other chakras and have experienced balance at times in each. But the Crown Chakra remains a mystery to me. And I don’t often occupy the present moment — I am more likely to be found in either the future or the past.

In our energy work classes, Ethel would lead us through guided meditations to open our Crown Chakras wider and wider. Most of the time, people have a thread-sized channel between this chakra and the Divine. With such small bandwidth, it’s not surprising that I would be short on inspiration and physical energy!

While meditating, I envisioned opening up my Crown Chakra to the size of my thumb, then the diameter of a toilet paper tube. I once even got it as big as a compact disc during an exercise where we classmates helped each other experience, energetically, our own physical deaths (we were actually lying on massage tables unharmed. The idea was, once you’ve faced your own death, you can live more fully without fear, in the present moment).

Ethel said something about the importance of loving your body just the way it is, of living “in” your body. She says that when you’re dwelling on hurts and injustices, you are living in your emotional body — in a past that can’t be changed. And when you are planning for events and contingencies yet to come, you are living in your mental body — in a future which exists only in theory. It is only when you occupy your physical body, along with the awareness of occupying your body, that you are in the present. This is why focusing on the breath can be so helpful in bringing your consciousness into your body and into the moment. That’s where all the answers are.

Seven years ago, I sat with my Grandpa for awhile after he died. I had never been with a newly dead body before, and my grandpa seemed not-so-different than he had moments before. A prime difference, I concluded, between a live body and a dead one is breath and flow (duh). The breath — reSPIRation — is the process by which we continually join our physical and SPIRitual selves. Breathing — the act we do 10 (or so) times a minute, every minute of the day — is an exercise of our Crown Chakra. Why not do it mindfully once in awhile?

~~~~~

This post researched, in part, from Anatomy of the Spirit , by Caroline Myss, PhD. The paintings for this series were created by Lisa Brown-Olsen.

guide to living in open adoption

Lori Holden, mom of a young adult daughter and a young adult son, writes from Denver. She was honored as an Angel in Adoption® by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.

Her first book, The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole, makes a thoughtful anytime gift for the adoptive families in your life. Her second book, Standing Room Only: How to Be THAT Yoga Teacher is now available in paperback, and her third book, Adoption Unfiltered, is now available through your favorite bookseller!

Find Lori’s books on her Amazon Author page and catch episodes of Adoption: The Long View wherever you get your podcasts.

2 Responses

  1. This post does resonate with me. I LOVED this post, Lori. My favorite color is purple and I always considered naming my children names like Violet and Lavender. (unfortunately I had partners with vastly different opinions.)With every day I’m trying to live in the present moment and be more mindful. Thanks for sharing this!

  2. Thanks, Lori. I just read the entire series. It gave me a lot of food for thought–I’ll be returning to it.

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